Working in education and surveying various mothers I see a common theme. Many mothers subscribe to the philosophy that they must abandon their dreams to support the dreams of their children and sometimes their mates. I think that this is detrimental to the development of our children. We must model the behavior we want to see in our offspring. If we are teaching them that they can become anything that want, teaching them to be an entrepreneur and to protect their dreams at all cost; we cannot send mixed messages.

Mixed messages are exactly what children receive when we give them advice and do the exact opposite. Yes, achieving your dream of becoming an author becomes harder to pursue when you have a family. You must do it anyway. You are modeling the ability to multi-task, deal with adversity and being true to yourself. Going back to school may seem daunting with the ever growing to-do-list but where there is a will, there is a way. There is night school, you can take one class a semester for a million years and let us not forget online courses. You can make it happen! There should be a piece of you that gets very conflicted when you tell little Johnny that he can be the president of the United States yet you have a basement full unfinished art work that you could sell and generate additional income.

Some of our dreams, if we pursued them fully could give us financial freedom. This means we could spend more time with our children and that is the gift that keeps on giving! If you are not busy building your dream, you are busy building someone else’s. If you are unhappy, working a dead-end job and simply existing; you are teaching your child this is what life is about. Is this really the message you want to convey to little Johnny who is still optimistic about his new world? I don’t think it is.

The greatest gift you can give to children is the one you give to yourself. Never give up on your dream. If you have breath, there is still a chance to see your dream come true. What I know for sure is, some children do what you tell them to do, some children do what you tell them not to do; but ALL children do what YOU do!